


This place is hella cool, but I'm going to miss dinner

by Tree_no3



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AUs, Alternate Universe - Six of Crows Fusion, Carry On Countdown (Simon Snow), Gen, Gotham, Marvel Universe, Six of Crows, also, also I have OCs in it, and I had him before I read Carry On, and everyone is out of character, and this was inspired off some random ass half awake text i sent a friend, carry on, cause I love them all, he's my OC, im sorry, im sorry if that's dissapointing, literally every fandom, so that's why it's this way, the simon here isn't carry on's simon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2020-02-23 20:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18709000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tree_no3/pseuds/Tree_no3
Summary: “Hello Mr.Stark,” Death said, “I understand that you have a reputation for cheating death.” there was a pause which Tony was not inclined to fill. Yeah, he was going to be leaving this place pretty soon.the tags give a better summary of what this is than anything I could write.This isn't quite finished, but I plan to update once a week. I'll write here if I dump it.So technically there is major character death in this bc they are already dead at the start of the fic.





	1. Tony Stark

**Author's Note:**

> !!!This fic references a major endgame event!!!  
> Also, there is swearing in this fic

 

When he woke up, everything had been black. Not in that he couldn’t see, Tony could see just fine, but the floor, the walls, the bench he was lying on, and somehow even his clothes were all  _ black.  _ Which really didn’t fit the season, it was summer for god’s sake, thought Tony. Then he shrugged, if he was going to be here for all eternity it didn’t matter much. Suddenly a door opened. 

“Tony Stark,” Said a voice from out in the hall, which was lit too brilliantly for him to see the source. But the voice was deep, menacing, and he could feel it reverberate through his bones.

“What’s up?” He replied, as quickly as he could. When there was no response, he continued in an effort to fill the silence, “Are you housekeeping then? I could use some new towels and also, when you prepare my bed, please no down pillows, I have allergies.” Tony’s face was the picture of confidence, but internally he had the feeling he was being suffocated. He swallowed the lump in his throat, “No? Well, bye then, I guess.”

“Come,” said the voice from  the hall, it’s tone showing obvious annoyance. Tony did his best to suppress a shudder, and sauntered into the hall. Now everything was white, and the fluorescent light burned his eyes.

“Place with no darkness then? That’s cool,” he noted, casually addressing the… smoke column thing… that stood next to him. It seemed to sigh, then drifted slowly down the hall. “If this is hell then there are some people I’d like to visit, namely my dad,” Tony continued, yapping away as best he could, “got somethings to apollogise for, ya know? As for others, I could stand to hang with...” He trailed off as a new door opened to reveal a large lawn. The smoke whispered into the yard, and Tony followed, albeit a bit slower. There was a lot to take in. The ground was covered in grey grass, with paths criss crossing at convenient places, and buildings lined the field, each one a variant shade of grey, black, or white. Overhead arched a pale blue dome that shimmered as if it possessed some kind of electricity. All this was pretty strange, but the strangest things of all were the harpies, Tony believed they were called, flying about.

The smoke guided him through a gate way next to the buildings and Tony saw that they were all enclosed in a steel wall leading to a pair of tall, old fastion gates. A dark, looming figure stood silently observing the smoke and Tony as they made their way towards it. Tony wasn’t sure why, but he knew the figure was death. He took a deep breath and turned his Tony Stark  ™ attitude on. 

“Hello Mr.Stark,” Death said, “I understand that you have a reputation for cheating death. And for doing what’s considered impossible.” there was a pause which Tony was not inclined to fill. “ Well, I just wanted to take the time to explain where you are so you don’t make a mess of things. You’re dead,” 

“Wow, shocker, I really thought I survived that, and that this was some--”

“You’re dead, and you are going to stay that way,” Death continued on, without pausing for Tony, “This is the place for people who we cannot decide where to put. It is likely you will go to heaven, but Hela is still putting up a fuss. Says she wants the whole Stark line,” Tony muttered nothing in particular, more for show than purpose as he considered his possibilities. If he stayed here, he might be able to find out who was going where, maybe call some favors and get a few people up to heaven, if they weren’t already going there. He still wanted out though, and he could swear he just saw Loki? What was he doing here? Wait, don’t get off track, we need to focus, he told himself.

“I had a friend - Natasha, where is she?” Tony asked abruptly interrupting Deaths’ explanation, or whatever it was. “She belongs in heaven, or Valhalla, or whatever you call it.” Death eyed him with annoyance, but Tony continued, “If-if she’s not there then I am going to go have a chat with whoever’s in charge of all this, would that be you or should I go someplace else“ 

“You cannot leave this place, it is impossible,” Death practically thundered, obviously angered at having been interrupted yet again. Tony drew a rather shaky breath, and glanced about. To his left, there was some kind of movement. He squinted at the air, and sure enough, he could vaguely see the trickster god squeezing between two chatting harpies and the wall. Loki nodded to him, then continued. Tony realized an alliance might come in handy for leaving this place, so he caused a distraction so the god could finish up whatever he was doing in peace.

“Excuse me? Did you just say I can’t do something? Challenge fucking accepted.” Tony half yelled at death, turning up the Stark attitude to 100. He continued ranting on, watching  Loki place something by the gate, then purposely bump into a harpy. The harpy screeched, waking the harpies in the guard house, who were visible through the windows. They all worked together to pull a slightly resisting Loki back towards the field. 

“I just want some hair grease,” He said mournfully as they tugged at him, “please, I just--”

“Why does this happen to me,” muttered Death under his breath.


	2. Loki

“So what was that thing you put by the fence?” Questioned Tony when he caught up to Loki. He almost had to jog to keep up with the taller… beings… long strides.

“A device that should deactivate the field long enough for me to inspect the gate,” Loki muttered. Stark had been bothering him for a while, and he really needed to lose the billionaire. Doubtless, he would make a great ally in the escape from this place, but he’d also make a formidable enemy if annoyed, and Simon seemed to be just the right person to piss him off. 

“Ok look, rudolf, I’ll make this simple. I want out. You want out. We’re both pretty smart. Or at least, I am. Anyways. I can help you, you can help me. What do you say?” Loki took a minute to think about it. It was one thing to try to ditch him, but now the mortal was actually asking to team up with him. Then he shrugged, might as well since saying no would be rude.

“Fine but there’s someone you have to meet first,”  _ and not hate him,  _ Loki added to himself. He changed his course to where he knew Simon was most likely working away at something dumb, like an afterlife roomba.

\--

“Yes!” Stark exclaimed, as Simon’s newest, and probably most useless, trinket began to function. It was a toaster that butters your toast, and then delivered it to you. Not that they ate in the after life, or had butter, or bread. Loki watched them, in a state of resigned frustration. 

When he and Stark walked in, Simon had been busy at work on the project. Stark had walked over, but was strictly ignored until he started poking some of the exposed wires. Simon swatted his hand away, but not before the toaster whirled to life. And there they were, half an hour later, still marveling at the fact that the damn thing worked.

“Are you guys done?” Asked Loki when he judged the two had had enough nerd time. Stark looked up sharply, then nodded. 

“Yeah, what’s the run down on this place?” He asked.

“Well, security wise, we’ve got harpies, the wall, and the dome. Harpies and the wall we can take care of easy. The dome is the problem.” Simon explained.

“According to what Asgard has learned of it, it is full of what mortals call jump points. However these jump points are uniquely sealed with what I believe midgard texts refer to as a ward. This ward has never, to our knowledge, been broken, though some old legends through various realms do refer to some kind of optical illusions consistent with the breaking of a ward and subsequent traveling through a jump point. As far as I can remember, none of these legends ever detailed how to do such a thing.” Loki elaborated.

“Our current plan is to use the device Loki planted tomorrow morning to rend a hole in the gates as well as the time continuum so we can inspect the qualities of the ward further. Then they’ll get mad, seperate us for about a week or so, but after that we can start developing a way to break through the ward.” Finished Simon.

“What if,” Stark paused, running a hand over his face, “what if I were to go do my own thing this week,” This earned him a rather betrayed look from Simon, but Loki thought he knew where he was going, “Then I could work with your data while you guys are… wherever you’re gonna be.”

“Maybe so,” Loki replied, “but this is our one chance for collecting data this way, and we all prioritize different types of data, since we’ve got such differing expertise.”

“Which are? We can’t be that different, I mean it’s not like you specialized in murder or something.” countered Stark.

“Among other things,” drolled Simon, “look man, if we don’t get out, we’re gonna be here forever, so, in the big picture, what difference does a week make? Or a month, or a couple years, for that matter.” 

“But--” Stark was sputtering, “what about Thor, and...who ever is important to you?” He said gesturing to Simon. Loki sighed, he seemed to be doing a lot of that these days, he did miss his brother, but at the same time, he didn’t particularly like the other realms. 

“Well-- actually, all my things are electronic, they’re gonna keep going forever, and I assume they’re off right now, so they won’t even notice I’m gone,” Simon replied. Stark made a strange kind of strangled, gasping sound, and turned to Loki. He shrugged, trying to indicate his agreement without going into his own motivations.

“Ok, fine, we all go to the fence and collect data,” Tony huffed, “but I’m going to need a day or two to get some instruments going.”

“Ofcourse,” Loki replied, “write down what you need, we’ll get it for you.”


	3. Simon (an OC)

It took the new guy 53 hours to get all his wacky contraptions into order. Far too long in Simon’s opinion, but then again, he had made like 10 different apparatuses, each one more alien looking than the last, so perhaps Simon ought to with hold his judgement. For now. Besides, he was working with a guy called Loki, like the norse god, so maybe things were just gonna be that way. 

Anyhow, they were at the guard house now so Simon figured it didn’t matter much. He nodded to Loki, who sent a shot of magic off to a little device planted on the other side of the field. Smoke started to plume out of the grass, which itself began to melt away into a dark pit of inky blackness at an alarming rate. Simon saw none of this, he simply presumed it was occurring. It was his device running most of the illusion (with the help of more magic than Simon liked to admit) after all. Harpies rushed past their hiding place to address the inky void consuming their home, and the area around the gate was left void of the monsters. Simon sauntered up to the gate, as expected, his device had entwined itself with the metal like a razor thin grape vine. Carefully, aware of Loki and the other guy watching him, he inserted a silver disc into the gadget. The gate melted (in real life, not an illusion this time) and the area was filled with gold and black sparks. They didn’t actually do anything, but Simon thought they looked cool, so there they were.

Quickly, the others set to work, Loki casting various spells, and the new guy, Toby, or whatever his name was, clicking away at his devices. Simon himself had quite a bit to do, and as soon as he was certain the reaction powering his gizmo was going steadily, Simon started testing materials in the space between and with the gates and the ward. A bit faster than any of them would have liked, the sparks ceased to appear, signaling the time freeze Simon had caused to be at an end, and Harpies were fluttering back towards the gates.

“I’m done with this, if you guys want to make a run for it,” offered Toby. Simon rolled his eyes.

“We kinda have a rep for doing things like this, it’s not worth the energy,” he replied, “though it would be just as well for you to leave and work with your data, I suppose.”

“I agree, why don’t you go.”

“See you,” and with that Toby was gone, slipping behind a building.

“It’s a pity his chosen profession was so mundane, he would have made an excellent assassin,” commented Simon.

“Or a great ally in a coup,” added Loki, as harpies started screeching at them. Simon asked one if they had changed up shampoos, cause their feathers smelled nice. Loki laughed and informed him the scent was that of blood, and after this they were both teleported to separate cells.

Simon was bored. Like really, really bored. Which was a problem because that meant he was thinking, or, avoiding thoughts about things like family and all subjects concerning his death, something rather hard for a dead person to do. In slow, lethargic movements, he traced his fingers along the steel bands in the wall, trying to wonder what purpose they served. Idly, he steered his thoughts off to the walls around their pocket of reality, to the gates, and to the ward. What purpose did the gate serve, he wondered, if everything was enclosed in a blue sphere?

Suddenly, alarms broke into his thoughts, Simon cringed at their volume, then kept himself as still as possible. “Step away from the wall,” came a voice through some hidden speaker, or maybe through magic, what did Simon know? Abjectly, he moved away from where he had been picking at one of the steel bands, surprised to find he had peeled off a small strip of the metal. Without thinking, he pocketed the scrap, and turned to face...well, he would have turned to face the door if he knew where it was, but he didn’t so he took a guess and faced a random wall. Unfortunately, it was the wrong wall, and the smoke column drifted in behind him without his noticing for a few extremely awkward seconds. (for the smoke, not for Simon.) 

_ Ahem, _ the smoke cleared its… throat… trying to get Simon, who had noticed him exactly 7.3 seconds previously, to turn around. The smoke “coughed” again, and Simon realized he had no other option than to acknowledge the presence. “Come,” said the smoke, drifting out into the corridor.

“But I rather like it here,” Simon responded. Looking about the room, wondering why he had been moved, all the while fingering the curious metal in his pockets. The smoke wisped up to him, so close that he could feel the fiery heat it radiated. “Ok, ok, I’m coming,” sighed Simon. Then suddenly it clicked, the bands must have something to do with keeping souls in one place. “Son of a bitch,” Simon whispered.

“EXCuse me?” The smoke replied, evidently very offended. Simon stuttered a sort of denial apology, not wanting his metal scrap to be found if he were to fall over from a hit. Unfortunately, some harpy guard had other ideas and Simon stumbled into his next cell a bit bruised, and with cuts in his palm from gripping the metals too tight.

As soon as those doors closed, Simon began to test his hypothesis that a broken ring of steel was the cause of him moving rooms. Once more, alarms rang, and he was escorted out, kicked about for a bit, and brought to a new cell. All the while, no one checked his pockets. “Are we under siege or something?” Asked Simon in the transition from cell number 5 to cell number 6, his pockets heavy with bits of metal. The smoke wasn’t about to tell him the steel ribbons he kept breaking were how souls were kept in the pocket, so they simply sighed, and led him to his new cell. The confinement staff gave up on him after the 10th. “Wow, it’s been a week already?” He asked.


	4. Tony

“Someone’s home early,” Commented Tony tiredly as the door to the “lab” opened. He looked up, and was surprised to see that Simon’s face was lit up with delight.

“I think I found a way to go through the ward,” Simon said, a bit too happily for Tony to properly pay attention to his words, or absorb their meaning. Tony, beginning to phase out, turned back to the repulser he was working on while Simon ranted through his excitement. Then, suddenly, he realized the magnitude of Simon’s half listened to statement, and phased back in as quickly as he could. “I mean, if the metal can keep soul inside of it, then shouldn’t it also protect us from the ward? Like...by creating some sort of barrier. Or..or like a really narrow tunnel. Or… a circus hoop! Yeah, we’d make some kind of circus hoop arrangement of it and jump through like tigers.” The metaphors were shit at best, but Tony was pretty sure he understood.

“Ok, kid, sounds good, do you wanna test that today, or wait for Loki?” He asked.

“First off, don’t call me kid, I’m… I was 23. Also, I’m pretty sure I’ve only got enough metal for one run, assuming we have to be able to carry the hoop, so we have to wait.” Tony thought for a while.

“What if I could extend the metal? If you’re right about this, we might only need a ‘hoop,’ as you call it, a few particles thick. It’s likely that if I were to incorporate that into some kind of nano tech explosion it would hold open a portal. Besides, we could always test with an extremely small amount, just big enough to see if our essence can move through.”

“Ok, that works for me, but there’s one more thing…” The kid trailed off, obviously confused about the subject he was going to bring up. “Which is?” Tony prompted. “Where we go when we open the portal. I for one, don’t fancy a swim in the atlantic.” Simon laughed uncomfortably, obviously having thought about this problem and come up with no solution. Luckily, Tony was still a bit smarter than the rest of the universe.

“Well,” he started, pulling out a chart “I’ve been working on that,” before them, a replica of the dome shone in pale blue rays, divided into small shapes of varying sizes and shapes, “This place seems to serve not only multiple worlds, but also multiple universes. Now, we already knew that, but I got a group of bots going, Scooby, Dooby, and Doo, who are currently testing each jump point,”

“How will you know when it’s the right one?” Asked Simon, leaning towards to map.

“I’m not sure,” replied Tony, grimacing at his own inadequacy, “each universe appears to give off a unique kind of radiation. I had the drones scan me for any energies they could find, and I hope that my...aura… I guess, will match a universe.”

“Oh, I’m Simon by the way,” said the kid suddenly. Tony nodded, “Simon Davidson.”

“I know,” Tony replied, then, seeing that the kid expected something, continued, “you can call me Tony,” Simon looked at him funny, but said nothing, walking off to the back of the lab. “Is your hand ok?” 

“Huh?”

“There’s blood on your hand, and on these metals, you ok?”

“Of course,” Simon turned back to his own projects, and Tony turned back to his table, setting aside the gauntlet and picking up the scraps of metal from where they lay on the table. It was a curious material, rigid one moment then utterly malleable the next before freezing into whatever new shape it fancied. Tony played with the metal for a while, testing its properties, then, reflecting that this would all be much easier with proper equipment, he set to work.


End file.
